News Archives

2010 News

An ICAM workshop entitled "Novel Emhttp://www.phys.lsu.edu/ICAM/ergent Phenomena Created by Spatial Confinement", organized by our research group,
was held at LSU on October 27-30, 2010. The focus of this workshop combines two of
the major material themes of the 21st century—nano and complexity with the expectation the new emergent phenomena will appear.
The challenge and the opportunity is to use what we learn to either design or discover
new materials or new functionality. There were approximately 50 participants attending
the workshop coming from the United States, Asia, and Europe. The workshop had a total
of 20 invited talks with extended times for exciting discussions. Professor Thomas Klei, the LSU Interim Vice Chancellor of Research & Economic Development, gave the welcome
speech at the workshop. This workshop was dedicated to Professor E. Ward Plummer, who turned 70 at the end of October 2010. Ward has a central scientific concern
of combining the knowledge from surface physics with materials science in order to
gain a better understanding of emergent phenomena in complex correlated electron materials
driven by broken symmetry and spatial confinement. This class of materials include
high-temperature superconducting copper oxides and newly discovered iron-based superconductors.
We also had a birthday celebration for Professor Plummer at Nottoway Plantation. The
entire event was a complete success.

Charles Wilson, graduate student in the Medical and Health Physics program, is one of eight students
from across the country who have been appointed to the Health Physics Society (HPS) Committee for Student Support.

Jorge Pullin has been named a Founding Editor of Physical Review X, the new, open access, all-electronic
journal in the Physics Review series, set to cover all areas of physics and begin
publishing in September 2011. As founding editor, Pullin will have to set up the initial
editorial board, recruit the initial batch of articles, and promote the journal at
physics meetings worldwide.

RESEARCH NEWS! - Condensed Matter Physics - Ward Plummer and his colleagues have demonstrated that self-assembled nanostructures (SANs) can
be used to fabricate the worlds smallest capacitor, setting up the stage for investigating
unusual electron behavior and exploring unique opportunities for energy applications.
The SANs consist of pairs of 10 to 20-nm long lines separated by 1.2 nm and act as
a quantum well on the surface TiO2(110). Inside the quantum well, a long wavelength
oscillatory feature of the local density of states is observed at room temperature
by scanning tunneling microscopy and attributed to the formation of electronic standing
wave for the lowest energy quantum state using first principles calculations. This
observation is the first attempt ever made to experimentally image the transition
from a strongly correlated regime in a zero-dimensional system to a quasi-independent
particle or band-like behavior in an extended one-dimensional system. TiO2 is an important
energy material as it is one of the main support used in industrial catalytic reactions.
The unusual electronic behavior demonstrated here opens up new possibilities for highly
efficient chemical reactivity with unprecedented applications in energy conversion
and harvesting. ABSTRACT -- RESEARCH ARTICLE

RESEARCH NEWS! - As part of a program to develop a model of quantum cosmology, Kristina Giesel and colleagues from the University of Warsaw have proposed a new theory to describe the evolution of space-time in the very early Universe. Their paper (in Phys. Rev. D 82, 104038) describes their approach to couple the gravitational field to a scalar field using
loop quantum gravity techniques to complete the quantization.

The U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA) recently awarded Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center and LSU (Ken Hogstrom, PI) a $2.2 million research contract to fund proton therapy research that could result in targeting cancer treatments more effectively. A major advantage of proton therapy comes from the possibility of delivering high
radiation doses to a targeted tumor while sparing surrounding healthy tissues and
organs. Additional work on bolus electron conformal therapy, a new electron beam technology
for individualized treatment of skin cancers, is described in the recent issue of
Mary Bird Perkins Perspective.

James Matthews has been elected co-spokesman for the Pierre Auger Observatory. The Auger Observatory, located in Argentina and operated by a collaboration of over
470 scientists from 17 countries, is the world's largest ultra-high energy cosmic
ray experiment.

Jorge Pullin has been appointed to the Executive Board of the Executive Council of the American
Physical Society.

Gabriela Gonzalez has been appointed Chair of the search committee for the new LIGO director.

Rongying Jin has been elected Fellow of the American Physical Society "for her significant contributions
to materials physics, including science-driven materials development and pioneering
studies of their underlying physics."

A paper by Kristina Giesel has been listed among the "highlights" of the Editorial Board of Classical and Quantum
Gravity, published by the Institute of Physics in the UK. The LSU gravity group has
made the highlights list every year since 2001.

Jorge Pullin has been appointed editor for the space-time and gravity section of Scholarpedia.
Scholarpedia is a wiki based encyclopedia using the same software as wikipedia, but
with articles written by experts and peer reviewed.

LSU Researchers Awarded One of the Largest NSF Grants in Louisiana History: LA-SiGMA will enhance materials science research capabilities for the state – Researchers
at LSU, together with those at universities across the state, recently received one
of Louisiana’s largest grants ever from the National Science Foundation, or NSF. The
Louisiana Alliance for Simulation-Guided Materials Applications, or LA-SiGMA, received
$20 million in NSF support. The alliance is led by LSU Professors Mark Jarrell of the Department of Physics & Astronomy and Randall Hall of the Department of Chemistry,
Louisiana Tech University Professor Ramu Ramachandran of chemistry and Tulane Professor
Lawrence Pratt of chemical and bimolecular engineering.

The Editorial Office in Singapore has appointed Parampreet Singh as Editor of the International Journal of Modern Physics D. This is the leading journal
in gravitational physics in Asia, published by World Scientific Publishing Company
in Singapore.

RESEARCH NEWS! - Jeff Blackmon and colleagues have used a beam of short-lived 132-Sn at the Holifield Radioactive
Ion Beam Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to provide a new test of the shell
model. 132-Sn, with doubly magic numbers of both protons and neutrons and an excess
of 8 neutrons over its number of protons, provides a test of the validity of the shell
model and lies at the border of the astrophysically interesting r-process region,
where it is thought that heavy nuclei are synthesized by neutron bombardment during
supernova explosions. The results have been published in Nature 465, 454 (2010) and were featured on the cover of the August Physics Today.

RESEARCH NEWS! - Carlos Palenzuela, Luis Lehner, and Steven Liebling have described a mechanism for producing the highly collimated relativistic jets
observed in black hole systems (Science 329, 927, 2010; Science 329, 908, 2010). Based on numerical simulations of the coalescence of two supermassive
black holes during a galaxy merger, they describe a scenario in which a characteristic
electron synchrotron signal is produced in association with a gravitational radiation
event, and predict that the combined electromagnetic-gravitational wave signature
might be observable out to a redshift of z ~ 1.

Work by the LSU Physics & Astronomy Numerical Relativity Group is featured in HPC Wire. At the recent TeraGrid '10 conference, Gabrielle Allen described the work by Allen, Erik Schnetter, and Ed Seidel in developing new software tools to attack the binary black hole problem in relativistic
astrophysics.

RESEARCH NEWS! - William Metcalf and his collaborators on the MiniBoone neutrino oscillation experiment have previously presented results showing that their
neutrino data are inconsistent with a two-neutrino oscillation interpretation of the
earlier results from the LSND experiment. At the recent Neutrino 2010 meeting in Greece, they have now reported that their antineutrino data are consistent
with an LSND-like excess above 450 MeV.

RESEARCH NEWS! - Gary Case, Mike Cherry, James Rodi, and the Gamma ray Burst Monitor collaboration analyzing earth occultation data from
the hard x-ray instrument on the Fermi gamma ray telescope mission have reported a sudden decrease in the hard x-ray (50-300 keV) emission from the black hole candidate Cygnus X-1 at the same time as an increase in the flux
in the 8-25 keV band. The observed behavior appears to be the start of a hard-to-soft-state
transition also observed at lower energies by the MAXI and RXTE missions and at higher
energies by AGILE.

LSU Professor Invited to Attend Science and Technology Meeting -LSU Professor, Hearne Chair of Theoretical Physics and Interim Co-Director for the
Center for Computation and Technology Jorge Pullin has been invited to attend a joint commission meeting on science and technology cooperation
between the United States and Argentina in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in September.
The meeting is organized by the United States Science & Technology Cooperation and
the Ministry of Science and Technology in Argentina and will be attended by representatives
of many U.S. agencies that fund science and technology projects, as well as their
counterparts in Argentina. Pullin was asked to attend the meeting because of his previous
experience in cooperation with Argentina and his expertise in the area.

Richard Kurtz has been named a Fellow of the AVS for his "experimental and theoretical work in interpreting intensities in photoelectron
angular distributions."

H. Edward Seidel has been appointed as Assistant Director of the Mathematics and Physical Sciences (MPS) Directorate at the National Science Foundation. Ed has been serving as Acting Assistant Director of MPS since August 2009 and Head
of the NSF Office of Cyberinfrastructure since September 2008. At LSU, he serves as
Floating Point Systems Professor in the Departments of Physics and Astronomy and Computer
Science, and was previously founding Director of the LSU Center for Computation &
Technology.

RESEARCH NEWS! - As described in a recent Gemini Observatory newsletter, luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) at high redshift contain great amounts
of dust, but a complete account of the origin of the dust so early in the history
of the universe remains lacking. Jen Andrews, Geoff Clayton, James Clem, Joey Chatelain, Joe Gallagher et al. have found evidence for early dust formation in a supernova remnant, but the
quantity means that supernovae are not likely the primary source of dust in LIRGs,
even allowing for dust formation in circumstellar interactions as well as in the ejecta.
Their results are published in the Astrophysical Journal 715, 541 (2010).

Jessica Brinson, Honors College Physics major who graduated in December 2009, has been awarded an
NSF graduate fellowship. Jessica's honors thesis on neutrino oscillation physics also
won the Outstanding Thesis Award from the Honors College. Jessica is currently working
with Dr. Thomas Kutter's group as a Research Associate on the T2K neutrino oscillation
experiment until she starts graduate school in the fall.

The Louisiana Space Consortium, directed by John Wefel, has been named among the 2010
Top Supporters of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and minority-serving
institutions in the survey conducted annually of engineering school deans of ABET-accredited
HBCU and minority institutions.

NANODAYS held at the Highland Road Park Observatory as part of a nationwide program to encourage
public interest in science attracted over 100 people to an event highlighting nanotechnology.

Congratulations to Robert Hynes who was awarded a Non-Tenured Faculty Research Award at the College of Basic Sciences'
recent Choppin Honors Convocation, and to Phillip Sprunger who received the College's Undergraduate Teaching Award.

RESEARCH NEWS! - Quantum Sensor Developed by LSU Researcher Breaks New Limits - Researchers at LSU have invented an optical sensor that surpasses a quantum limit
to sensitivity previously believed to be unbeatable. the breakthrough has a broad
array of applications, from gravity wave observatories seeking to observe distant
and bizarre astrophysical phenomena, to optical gyroscopes used in commercial navigation.
The paper is published in Physical Review Letters 104, 103602 (2010).

Jorge Pullin has been appointed to the Advisory Panel of the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity of the Institute of Physics (UK). The advisory panel is composted of 20 high caliber researchers from around the world
and will provide advice to the journal on fast track communications and other high
priority research papers in order for the journal to apply the highest possible quality
standards.

Robert O'Connell is the longest serving tenured professor at the University. First working at LSU in
1964. O'Connell teaches theoretical physics. O'Connell has taught Physics since 1964.

RESEARCH NEWS! - LSU Researchers Detect First Neutrino Events at Facilities in Japan: T2K experiment off to good start. - Thomas Kutter and his colleagues on the Tokai to Kamioka Long Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Experiment (T2K) have detected the first neutrino events generated by their newly built neutrino beam
at the J-PARC accelerator laboratory in Tokai, Japan. The initial neutrino events
were detected in a “near” detector (INGRID) whose purpose is to determine the neutrino
beam’s direction and profile before it travels to the “far” detector at the Super-Kamiokande
neutrino laboratory 183 miles away near Toyama. Super-Kamiokande, a 50,000 ton tank
of ultra-pure water located over half a mile underground, will be used together with
the near detectors to perform the most sensitive search for oscillations between all
three types of neutrinos at the same time. PHOTO: The picture shows a cosmic ray event
entering from the top left, showering in the tracker with a photon and charged particles
depositing energy downstream in the electromagnetic calorimeter. Click the image for
a bigger view.

Victor Taveras, Postdoctoral Researcher in Physics and Astronomy and CCT, is the winner of the Bergmann-Wheeler prize of the International Society of General Relativity and
Gravitation. Victor's citation reads "For contributions to loop quantum cosmology and the development
of a novel extension of loop quantum gravity."

Beverly Rodriguez has been awarded a 2009 LSU Foundation Outstanding Staff Service award in recognition
of all she does for the Department and all of us. Congratulations Beverly!

Thank you to Entergy Corp. for a $100,000 gift to the Department to support the new Health Physics and Nuclear Power Industry Workforce Development
Initiative being developed jointly by the Departments of Physics and Astronomy and
Mechanical Engineering. With support from Entergy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
the program is designed to establish a new curriculum, support new faculty, and train
students to fill a growing need for trained scientists and engineers in the nuclear
power industry. Erno Sajo is the Principal Investigator of the NRC grants and director of the new program.

Joseph Giaime has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS).

Huiheng Medical, Inc., a Chinese company, plans to build a plant in Baton Rouge to manufacture radiation treatment devices. The company's Whole Body Gamma Knife is already used to treat cancer patients across
the world. One of the reasons cited by the company for choosing Baton Rouge was LSU's Medical Physics program.

The HASP (High Altitude Student Platform) balloon instrument was successfully launched on September 11, 2009 from Ft. Sumner, NM with payloads
provided by student groups from Virginia Tech, Univ. of North Dakota/Univ. of North
Florida, Louisiana-Lafayette, Maryland-College Park, Colorado-Boulder, and Montana
State University. The flight lasted for 14 hours and reached an altitude of 120,000'.
The news report from Channel 12 News in Phoenix shows a photograph of the balloon at night shortly before cutdown as seen from the
Gilbert-Rotary Observatory in Gilbert, AZ.

Dana Browne, Ray Chastain, Mike Cherry, Juana Moreno, and Adjunct Assistant Professor Cyrill Slezak have joined with the Math Department, Chemistry, College of Basic Sciences, and the
Gordon A. Cain Center for Scientific, Technological, Engineering and Mathematical
Literacy to offer a Masters in Natural Science program for Louisiana science teachers. Twenty teachers are currently enrolled in the program
to provide advanced content and pedagogy training, enhance the quality of local science
education, and provide increased access to advanced high school courses. The program
has recently received National Science Foundation funding to continue for another five years.

The National Science Foundation has awarded a grant of $1,400,000 to Louisiana State University & Agricultural and
Mechanical College for support of the project "PetaCactus: Unraveling the Supernova
-- Gamma-Ray Burst Mystery" under the direction of Erik Schnetter, Adam Burrows, Christian
D. Ott, and Gabrielle D. Allen.

Undergraduate physics majors Casey Pangan and Christopher Dupuis, working with Jeff Blackmon have received travel awards from the American Physical Society to present posters on their work at the Joint Meeting of the APS Division of Nuclear
Physics and the Physical Society of Japan in Hawaii in October. M.M. White, Jeff Blackmon, Laura Lindhardt, Casey Pangan and collaborators will present posters on "Electronics and Data Acquisition for miniLENS"
and "Performance of a 2m prototype neutron detector for VANDLE", and Chris Dupuis,
Blackmon, Lindhardt, Milan Matos, and collaborators will present a poster on "Development
of a large acceptance, tracking gas ionization chamber".

RESEARCH NEWS! - The journal Classical and Quantum Gravity highlights a community paper called "Testing Gravitational-Wave Searches with Numerical Relativity Waveforms: Results
from the First Numerical Injection Analysis (NINJA) Project" with authors from many institutions, including several current and former members
of LSU's Relativity Group. The article represents the first large-scale collaborative work between the data
analysis and numerical relativity communities towards measuring and recognizing the
gravitational waves expected in the merger of a binary black hole system in the data
from detectors in operation (e.g., LIGO). For several years, the numerical relativity
community has been working towards obtaining such waveforms - which required constructing
complex codes implementing Einstein's equations - while the data analysis community
has developed a series of refined tools to analyze the data from interferometric detectors.
This article presents the first cohesive effort to adopt the knowledge gained through
the simulations and study its incorporation in data analysis pipelines, measuring
efficiency in simulated gaussian data."

A big thank you goes to Scott and Susan Brodie, who have made a gift of $200,000 to the LSU Foundation to establish the Scott and Susan Brodie Science Honors Scholar Awards and the Scott and Susan Brodie
Professorship in Physics and Astronomy. Additional matching funds from the Louisiana Board of Regents raise the total value of their gift to $260,000. The Department very much appreciates
their generous support.

The Physics Intensive Orientation for Students (PhIOS), a one-week intensive program specifically for incoming Physics, Astronomy, and Medical
Physics majors designed to prepare students for their college coursework and enhance
their student skills, operated for the first time in August 2009 under the direction
of Associate Chair Dana Browne. The College's full set of summer orientation programs,
including PHIOS, is described in an article in LSU News.

A gallery of Undergraduate Physics Major, James Champagne's astrophotography images can be found here. The image at the left is a wide field
view of the Rho Ophiucus star-forming region of the Milky Way, with antares the bright
star near the center of the view. The images were taken between November 2007 and
June 2009.

A team led by Adjunct Professor Gabrielle Allen has won the IEEE SCALE 09 (International Scalable Computing Challenge) competition in Shanghai. The team's
application involved a scalable end-to-end interactive system for the simulation and
visualization of black holes that depended on the 10Gbps LONI network and machines.
The team, a collaboration involving CCT Computer Science and Electrical and Computer
Engineering, included Physics and Astronomy Research Assistant Professors Erik Schnetter and Peter Diener and graduate student Oleg Korobkin. Article in the Baton Rouge newspaper, The Advocate, can be found here. More information
can be found here.

Mette Gaarde has been elected to the Executive Committee of the APS Topical Group on Few-Body Systems.

Jonathan Dowling has been invited to speak to a meeting in Washington, D.C. organized by the White
House on the National Quantum Information Science Initiative. This is a planning meeting
to disucss the future of quantum information.

TeraGrid'09 Keynote Speakers include Ed Seidel, Paul Avery and Thomas Cheatham -CHICAGO - Edward Seidel, a globally recognized physicist and the leader of the National
Science Foundation's Office of Cyberinfrastructure; Paul Avery, a recognized leader
in advanced grid and networking for science; and Thomas Cheatham, a professor well
known for his work in biomolecular simulations, will deliver keynote speeches at the
TeraGrid'09, the fourth annual National Science Foundation (NSF) TeraGrid conference,
June 22-25 in Arlington, Virginia.

Graduate student, Sarah Caudill, has been nominated as an "alternate" to attend the annual meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany this summer. She has also been selected to be nominated as a member of the
U.S delegation to the 2010 Lindau Meeting. Nominations of graduate students whose
work is funded by the National Science Foundation were solicited from research institutions
across the country; each institution was permitted to submit a single nomination.
Sarah was the outstanding graduate student nominated for this program by LSU. Former
LSU Physics PhD student, Cindy Roundtree, was nominated and attended the 50th anniversary Nobel Laureates meeting in Lindau,
Germany in June, 2000.

RESEARCH NEWS! - The ATIC Collaboration has discovered an excess of electrons in the cosmic rays at
300-800 GeV. This may be the first observation of a nearby source of particle acceleration
from an as yet unidentified astrophysical object or it could be a signature of the
annihilation of a Kaluza-Klein dark matter particle of mass about 620 GeV. The finding
is reported in "An Excess of Cosmic Ray Electrons at Energies of 300-800 GeV" by John Wefel, Greg Guzik, Joachim Isbert et al. in Nature 456, 362 (2008) and is featured in Nature News & Views p. 329 as well as being the subject of a NASA press release and in The Advocate. ATIC was largely constructed at LSU and the excess in the spectrum was discovered
in data collected during ATIC's first two Antarctic balloon flights. More information
about the ATIC experiment can be found here.

In addition to the recent reference to the department's research on the popular TV
series "The Big Bang Theory", we have two additional media stars: Juana Moreno has been invited to attend the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Education Workshop November 13th and 14th in Arlington, Virginia. The presentations and discussions
can be viewed on live webcast by registering at this web address. Also, an interview
with Geoffrey Clayton at the American Association of Variable Star Observers meeting on R Coronae Borealis
stars can be viewed at this web address.

Research News! - D. Uskov and A. R. P. Rau: Geometric phases and Bloch-sphere constructions for SU(N) groups with a complete
description of the SU(4) group", Phys. Rev. A 78, 022331 (2008), provides a geometrical view of two-spin quantum systems. The quantum
system of a pair of spins (qubits) lies at the heart of quantum computing, quantum
cryptography and related areas of current research. This paper develops a geometrical
picture for the time evolution of such systems that closely parallels a similar picture,
called the Bloch sphere, which has been very influential over the decades for the
quantum mechanics of a single spin in magnetic fields. This latter picture of a unit
vector rotating on a sphere provides both basic insight into magnetic resonance and
guides its applications in chemistry, biology and medical magnetic resonance imaging.
Extension to two (or more) spins provides analogous geometrical objects, albeit of
higher dimension, including spheres of larger dimension. The quantum evolution is
mapped into that of real vectors rotating on such geometrical manifolds.

As part of a major expansion of LSU's materials science program, six new faculty have
joined the department in the area of condensed matter and materials science: Assoc.
Prof. Shane Stadler (experimental condensed matter, with a joint appointment at CAMD) and Asst. Prof.
Juana Moreno (theoretical and computational material science, with a joint appointment at CCT)
joined the department in August 2008. Both are the recipients of NSF CAREER grants.
In January 2009, we will be joined by Prof. Mark Jarrell, also working in computational material science with a joint appointment at CCT.
Prof. Jarrell is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and will act as head of
the Materials World Focus Area at CCT. His appointment is also associated with the
LONI Institute and the Materials Science Multidisciplinary Hiring Initiative. Prof.
Ward Plummer, also joining the department in January, is a member of the US National
Academy of Sciences and currently Distinguished Professor of Physics and Director
of the Tennessee Advanced Materials Laboratory at the University of Tennessee, and
Distinguished Scientist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
He is the holder of numerous honors including Fellow of the American Physical Society
and the American Vacuum Society. He has been awarded the Davisson-Germer Prize of
the American Physical Society and the Medard W. Welch Award of the American Vacuum
Society. Also joining the department in January and working with Prof. Plummer in experimental materials science are Prof. Jiandi Zhang and Assoc. Prof. Rongying Jin. Prof. Jin has been awarded the Excellent Young Scientist Award from the Chinese Academy
of Science and the IBM Corporation Rising Star of Technology Award, and Prof. Zhang
is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award.

LSU appears on the CBS TV show "The Big Bang Theory"! This undoubtedly a first for LSU! Slightly after the 2:20 mark, a couple can be
seen arguing the merits of loop quantum gravity vs string theory. The lady cites two
achievements of loop quantum gravity, the calculation of black hole entropy and "minute
differences in the speed of light for different colors." The second item refers to
a paper by Pullin and Gambini.

Welcome to Dr. Ray Chastain, who has joined the department as an instructor. Dr. Chastain's expertise is in observational
radio astronomy. He comes to LSU from Bucknell University.

Richard Kurtz has been appointed Associate Dean for Research in the College of Basic Sciences.

Interim co-directors picked for LSU research center:Jorge Pullin has been named interim co-director, with Stephen Beck of the School of Music, of the Center for Computation and Technology (CCT). Beck and Pullin will jointly lead the center while LSU starts an international search
to replace Ed Seidel, who recently accepted a job as the National Science Foundation’s cyber-infrastructure
director.

RESEARCH NEWS ! - By replacing a few percent of iron atoms with manganese in the semiconductor ferrosilicon
(FeSi), John DiTusa, former student Ncholu Manyala, and colleagues have demonstrated a possible method for systematically inducing non-Landau
Fermi liquid behavior in doped semiconductors. ("Doping a semiconductor to create an unconventional metal", Nature 454, 976, 2008). See also the News and Views article "Materials Science: A metal left spinning", Nature 454, 951 (2008). The effect is apparently due to too few mobile electrons to compensate
for the spins of unpaired electrons on the impurity atoms. The behavior can be turned
on or off by applying a magnetic field at low temperature. More information.

Ph.D. student, Jennifer Andrews has been awarded a NASA Graduate Student Researchers Program (GSRP) Fellowship for
her thesis research on "A Multi-Wavelength Study of Dust Production in Type II Supernovae."
She has also been successful in applying for observing time on the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, and at the Gemini Observatory.

RESEARCH NEWS ! - Three papers by the theoretical and experimental gravity group have been highlighted
by the editorial board of the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity this year: [1]
In "Rotating collapse of stellar iron cores in general relativity" (Class. Quantum
Grav. 24, S139 2007), B. Zink, E. Schnetter, and colleagues present the results of simulations of the collapse of rotating stellar
iron cores, focusing on the gravitational wave emission during the collapse, core
bounce, and post-bounce phases. [2] In "Late-time tails in the Kerr spacetime" (Class.
Quantum Grav. 25, 072001, 2008), Jorge Pullin and colleagues describe the decay with time of perturbation fields outside a black
hole. [3] In "Search for gravitational-wave bursts in LIGO data from the fourth science
run" (Class. Quantum Grav. 24, 5343, 2007), the LIGO Science Collaboration (including
R. Amin, L. Blackburn, J. Giaime,G. Gonzalez, C. Hanna, W. Johnson, A. Rodriguez, J. Slutsky, and M. Sung at LSU) describe the results of the fourth science run with the LIGO and GEO 600
gravitational wave detectors. With significantly lower noise and greater sensitivity
than previous runs, no positive signals from supernova or binary black hole merger
events were detected. The theoretical gravity group has made the Classical and Quantum
Gravity highlights list every year since the groupt started at LSU in 2001!

RESEARCH NEWS ! - The binary pulsar system PSR J0737-3039A/B consists of two closely spaced neutron
stars in an edge-on configuration such that one pulsar eclipses the other once in
every 2.45 hr orbit. The spin of one compact rotating star couples with the orbital
angular momentum and the spin of the other, analogous to spin-orbit and spin-spin
coupling in an atomic system, providing a test of general relativity in the strong-field
regime. The relativistic spin precession of pulsar B has now been measured to be about
4.80/year, R. Breton et al., Science 321, 104, 2008 , in agreement with the prediction
of 5.10/yr made by B. Barker and R.F. O'Connell, Phys. Rev. D12, 329 (1975), within an observational uncertainty of 13%. See also R.F. O'Connell , http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.3806 (2008) which reviews both strong and weak-field tests. The terminology spin-orbit
and spin-spin in the gravitational context was introduced by R.F. O'Connell, in Experimental
Gravitation:Proceedings of Course 56 of the International School of Physics "Enrico
Fermi," B. Bertotti, Ed. (Academic Press, New York, 1974), p. 496.

RESEARCH NEWS ! - The Auger Collaboration (including Jim Matthews, Alexei Dorofeev, Javier Gonzalez at LSU, and Megan McEwan, Roger McNeil, and Rishi Meyhanden formerly in the department) has published evidence for a cutoff at the high end of
the cosmic ray spectrum. Auger previously showed that the arrival directions of cosmic
rays at energies above 6 x 1019 eV were correlated with the directions of Active Galactic
Nuclei -- i.e., that the highest energy cosmic rays are extragalactic in origin. Now,
at the same energy, Auger has demonstrated the presence of the predicted GZK cutoff
due to the interaction of extragalactic protons with the cosmic microwave background.
The scientific article appears in Physical Review Letters 101, 061101 (2008). A commentary
by Mike Cherry appears on the APS Physics Viewpoint web site.

RESEARCH NEWS ! - LSU and Florida State University (FSU) are collaborating to develop the Array for Nuclear Astrophysics Studies with
Exotic Nuclei (ANASEN). ANASEN combines three different types of detectors to achieve
an efficient and selective instrument for studies of nuclear reactions induced by
low intensity beams of exotic nuclei. Solid-state and gaseous detector technologies
are being developed with state-of-the-art electronics systems to provide accurate
measurements of the energies and trajectories of charged ions over a large angular
range. Students at LSU and FSU will develop and test detector elements that will be
combined into a completed array and used in experiments with beams of exotic nuclei
at the Fox Superconducting Accelerator Laboratory at FSU. ANASEN will allow new direct measurements of nuclear reaction cross sections that
are important for understanding stellar explosions like X-ray bursts and the structure
of short-lived nuclei. ANASEN will also be a portable instrument that will be moved
to the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University
and potentially to other laboratories. LSU and FSU students will have a unique opportunity
to conduct leading research in nuclear physics and nuclear astrophysics with ANASEN
at major national accelerator facilities. Students will also gain invaluable hands-on
experience in forefront instrumentation and techniques that are important for various
fields from health care to national security. ANASEN is funded by the by the National
Science Foundation's Major Research Instrumentation Program and by LSU and FSU, and
led at LSU by Jeff Blackmon.

RESEARCH NEWS ! - The LIGO collaboration (including the LSU group led by Profs. Joe Giaime, Gabriela González,Bill Hamilton, and Warren Johnson), has presented upper limits on gravitational wave emission from the Crab pulsar,
giving an upper limit on gravitational wave emission that beats indirect limits inferred
from the spin-down and braking index of the pulsar and the energetics of the nebula.
The scientific paper can be found here. A popular writeup can be found here.

RESEARCH NEWS ! - Titanium dioxide (TiO2) has a number of uses in catalysis, photochemistry, and sensing
that are linked to the reducibility of the oxide. Usually, bridging oxygen (Obr) vacancies
are assumed to cause the Ti 3d defect state in the TiO2 band gap. Phil Sprunger and colleagues from the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center, Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Institute for Storage Ring Facilities at the University of Aarhus in Denmark propose that Ti interstitials in the near-surface region may be largely
responsible for the defect state in the band gap. Based on data from high-resolution
scanning tunneling microscopy and photoelectron spectroscopy measurements, they argue
that these donor-specific sites play a key role in and may dictate the ensuing surface
chemistry. Density functional theory calculations support the experimental observations.
The scientific paper was published in Science 320, 1755 (2008).

Spin Helicity Workshop Aims to Bring Together Several Communities of Electron Physicists - "Matthias Eschrig and Gerd Schön of the Universität Karlsruhe and Ilya Vekhter of Louisiana State University are organizing an I2CAM Exploratory Workshop entitled
“Spin Helicity and Chirality in Superconductor and Semiconductor Nanostructures” to
be held in Karlsruhe, Germany July 13-17.

RESEARCH NEWS ! - Matthew Anderson, Luis Lehner, Patrick Motl, David Neilsen, Carlos
Palenzuela, andJoel Tohline, together with colleagues from Brigham Young University and Long Island University, recently published a discussion of magnetic field effects on neutron star mergers
and the electromagnetic and gravitational wave radiation that results. An article
from the Salt Lake Tribune describing the work can be found here. An article about the implications for neutron stars with very high magnetic fields
("magnetars") can be found on the Science Magazine website here. The original paper can be found here. Anderson and Neilsen were recent Postdoctoral Researchers at LSU and are now working
at BYU.

Arlo U. Landolt is a member of the National Research Council's Space Studies Board Committee on Science
Opportunities Enabled by NASA's Constellation Systems, NASA's new launch systems being
designed to implement the lunar exploration component of the Vision for Space Exploration
and the NASA Authorization Act of 2005. The committee's web site can be found here.

One of the prestigious prizes awarded at the American Physical Society meeting in
New Orleans in March 2008, was the Aneesur Rahman Prize to Gary S. Grest of Sandia Laboratories for "his ground-breaking development of computational methods
and their applications". Gary received his Ph.D. from our department in 1974 (thesis
advisor: A.K. Rajagopal) and was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

RESEARCH NEWS ! - John Gibbons, chief of clinical physics at Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center and an adjunct professor
in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has helped introduce a new treatment for a rare form of eye
cancer, choroidal melanoma, in which low-dose radiation is applied to the affected
area in an ingenious way: Radioactive "seeds" about 3 millimeters long are placed
inside a solid gold cap, or plaque, that is attached to the eyeball. Approximately
two thousand new cases of choroidal melanoma are diagnosed in the United States every
year. Gibbons' new treatment procedure is available through a partnership between
Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center and Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center and
is described in the March 25, 2008 issue of the Baton Rouge Business Report.

RESEARCH NEWS ! - Ken Schafer and colleagues from Lund and Amsterdam have demonstrated that a train of attosecond
UV pulses phase locked to an infrared field can be used to control the ionization
of helium atoms with extremely rapid precision. Their work is highlighted in a Nature Photonics Research Highlights article. In a separate article, Schafer and his collaborators demonstrate the use of a train
of ultrafast infrared laser pulses to produce images of electron motion on sub-femtosecond
timescales. The "electron stroboscope" enables "unprecedented control of electron
dynamics" and is expected to lead to detailed, precise studies of electron-atom interactions.
A Physical Review Focus article describes the electron stroboscope.

Congratulations to Bob O'Connell and Ravi Rau, who were honored as "Outstanding Referees" by the American Physical Society at its
recent March meeting. This recognition was awarded to referees who "have been truly
exceptional in their contributions to the physics community by their hard work and
careful attention to the peer review process." The complete list of awardees can be
found at http://publish.aps.org/OutstandingReferees.

2007 News

RESEARCH NEWS ! - LIGO Sheds Light on Cosmic Event - The non-detection of gamma ray burst GRB070201 by LIGO indicated that this event
was not caused by the merger of two neutron stars or black holes, contrary to the
expectations for a short-duration gamma ray burst observed in a nearby galaxy. The
scientific article can be found here.

RESEARCH NEWS ! - LSU Faculty are involved in two of the top 10 physics stories of the year according to the list published by the American Institute of Physics. LSU faculty are involved in the MiniBooNE experiment and the Auger experiment. MiniBoone
(which involves Professor William Metcalf and his research group) recently showed evidence that appears to rule out a fourth
generation of neutrinos. Previous measurements of neutrino oscillations had provided
tentative evidence for a family of "sterile" neutrinos; MiniBooNE has ruled that out,
leaving only the standard three neutrino families associated with the electron, muon,
and tau particles. Auger, the world's largest cosmic ray telescope, involves Professor
James Matthews; Auger has provided the first direct evidence that the highest energy cosmic rays
are produced by active galactic nuclei powered by massive black holes at the cores
of galaxies.

Diola Bagayoko, Professor of Physics at Southern University and Adjunct Professor at LSU, along with the Timbuktu Academy he founded and currently directs, received the 2007 Benjamin Banneker Legacy Award for their work and excellent results in grade school education (K-8th grade). The
award ceremony took place on November 7, 2007 in Washington, D.C. Dr. William (Bill)
Cosby presented the award to Dr. Bagayoko. The Benjamin Banneker Legacy Awards are
made by the Benjamin Banneker Institute for Science and Technology in Washington. More information on the K-16 systemic mentoring and research participation
programs of the Timbuktu Academy, click the link above. Congratulations to Diola and
the Timbuktu Academy.

Gabriela González has been appointed Chair of the committee that will select the winner of the GWIC
thesis prize. GWIC is the Gravitational Wave International Committee, a sub-committee of the IUPAP, International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. The
committee selects the winner based on the best thesis in gravitational wave research
worldwide.

Gabriela González has been named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in recognition of "her experimental contributions to the field of gravitational wave
detection, her leadership in the analysis of LIGO data for gravitational wave signals,
and for her skill in communicating the excitement of physics to students and the public."

RESEARCH NEWS ! - The Auger experiment has announced the first correlation of ultra-high energy (1020
eV) cosmic ray arrival directions with extragalactic sources. Based on a sample of
data taken between 2004 and 2007, Auger sees evidence for their highest energy events
coming from the directions of nearby active galactic nuclei. The scientific article
appears in Science.

RESEARCH NEWS ! - The ATIC cosmic ray balloon experiment is featured on LSU's home page as part of
LSU's Antarctic research program. ATIC is preparing for its third flight to measure the composition and energy spectrum
of high energy cosmic ray nuclei and electrons. Details and the latest news regarding
the current flight campaign can be found here.

RESEARCH NEWS ! - At the 209th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington, astronomers announced findings of unusually high levels of
the oxygen isotope 18O in two extremely rare types of stars. This breakthrough has
led astronomers to believe that the origin of these odd stars could be the merging
of white dwarf stars, the burnt-out remnants of normal stars like the Sun. Read the
entire article in our Fall 2007 departmental newsletter. For more information, The Gemini Observatory website press release can be found
here. The Gemini press release recorded more hits (more than 50,000) in the first
three months after its release than any previous Gemini press release.

RESEARCH NEWS ! - "The Pierre Auger Observatory: Measuring the Highest Energy Cosmic Rays" - In July
2007, the initial Auger results were presented at the 30th International Cosmic Ray
Conference in Mexico. The data indicated a clear cutoff in the spectrum near 1020
eV, a result known as the "GZK cutoff" and expected due to interactions of high energy
cosmic ray protons with the cosmic microwave background. The Auger Collaboration consists
of over 200 scientists from more than 20 countries. The group participating from LSU
is led by Prof. James Matthews and includes Prof. Roger McNeil, postdocs Alexei Dorofeev and Javier Gonzalez, graduate student Megan McEwen, and undergraduate students Rachel Mannino and Brittan Farmers. Prof. Matthews has been a part of the project since it was first conceived in 1992.
More information about Auger can be found by visiting Nature.com, Science Magazine, or the Auger Observatory website. Read the entire article in our Fall 2007 departmental newsletter. Links to additional news articles about the Auger discovery can be found at Google
News (search for "Auger cosmic rays").

RESEARCH NEWS ! - "The Relativistic Turducken Approach to Stuffing a Black Hole" - Erik Schnetter, Manuel Tiglio, and Peter Diener from LSU's Physics and Astronomy Department and the Center for Computation and Technology, working together with colleagues from the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolas
de Hidalgo in Mexico, North Carolina State University, the University of Southampton
in Britain, and the Albert Einstein Institute in Germany, have shown how to stuff
a black hole. The result is that their "turducken" approach to stuffing a back hole
may lead to useful methods of simulating the behavior of real black holes irrespective
of many of the unobservable details of how the interior stuffing is arranged. A preprint
of the paper can be found on the web. More information can be found in the article in our Fall 2007 departmental newsletter.

RESEARCH NEWS ! - "Medical Physics is a fundamental science concerned with improving people's lives,"
said Dr. Polad Shikhaliev, who joined the LSU faculty in January, 2007 as an Assistant Professor in its joint
Medical Physics Program with Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center. "Medical Physics has
a direct impact on people's health, helping cure breast cancer. As a medical physicist,
I conduct research with detector technology to find cancer earlier". Dr. Shikhaliev's
current research is focused on developing a new breast CT system that will allow detecting
breast cancer at its very early stages. Breast CT, as proposed by Dr. Shikhaliev,
should be able to detect breast lesions as small as 2-3 mm, compared to 10mm, which
is often the case in current mammography x-rays. He also expects his research to acquire
the CT scan with less radiation dose to the breast than current low-risk mammography
techniques and with no pain or discomfort. Read the entire article in our Fall 2007 departmental newsletter.

Joel Tohline has been elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Each year the Council elects members whose "efforts on behalf of the advancement of
science or its applications are scientifically or socially distinguished." Dr. Tohline
is being honored for his " . . . contributions in the astrophysical application of
numerical hydrodynamics, in particular to star formation, galactic dynamics, and compact
objects, and for contributions to the development of computational astrophysics in
Louisiana."

Ravi Rau has been elected Vice-Chair of the American Physical Society (APS) Topical Group on
Few-Body Problems.

Joel Tohline has been invited to serve a 3-year term on the National Science Foundation's Directorate
of Math & Physical Sciences Advisory Committee (MPSAC). The MPSAC is the only official
advisory body to the Divisions within the Math and Physical Sciences Directorate,
and the Directorate relies on the AC for both high level advice and connection to
the community. More information on the MPSAC can be found here.

Luis Lehner has been appointed to the Selection Committee of the Nicholas Metropolis Prize of
the American Physical Society. The prize is awarded every year for the best dissertation
in computational physics. Lehner was the first recipient of the prize in 1999.

Profs. Jerry Draayer and Jorge Pullin have been appointed to the editorial board of Research Letters in Physics, an open
access journal.

The conference Profs. Rodolfo Gambini (University of the Republic, Uruguay) and Jorge Pullin are organizing in Uruguay
in October has been decleared "of national interest" by the government in Uruguay.
Signatures at the bottom of the document are those of the Secretary of State, the
Secretary of Education, and the President of the Republic.

Luis Lehner will be one of the participants in the invitation-only workshop "Enabling Science
Discoveries through Visual Exploration", organized by the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. on September 27-28, 2007.

Two papers by Physics and Astronomy Professors Manuel Tiglio and Peter Diener with Research Associate, Eric Schnetter, and by former LSU graduate student and PhD graduate Gioel Calabrese (currently in England) have been chosen among the highlights of 2006/2007 by the
Editorial Board of the Journal "Classical and Quantum Gravity", published by the Institute of Physics of the UK. Papers published by members of the LSU Relativity Group have made the highlights list for the last six years.The proceedings of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific conference series entitled
"The Future of Photometric, Spectrophotometric and Polarimetric Standardization" that
took place in Blankenberge, Belgium was dedicated to Arlo U. Landolt in recognition
of his life work of setting standars in photometry.

RESEARCH NEWS ! - John DiTusa and a group of international colleagues have discovered an unusual magnetic material
that has major implications in Quantum Physics. Their findings were published online
July 26, 2007 by Science in an article entitled "Mesoscopic Phase Coherence in a Quantum
Spin Fluid."

Jorge Pullin has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS). In addition, he also has been elected corresponding member of the Mexican
Academy of Sciences (Academia Mexicana de Ciencias), a non-profit organization comprising
over 1,800 distinguished Mexican scientists.

LSU Professor Receives Award for Work with International Neutrino ExperimentThomas Kutter has received an Outstanding Junior Investivator Award from the Department of Energy
for his work on the large-scale T2K neutrino oscillation project in Japan in hopes
of solving neutrino mysteries. - - posted August 22, 2007

Prof. Bradley Schaefer has just won a share of the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize as a particiapant in the discovery
that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, not decelerating as expected.
By measuring the brightnesses of a large number of very distant supernovae, two competing
teams -- the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-z Supernova Search team -- simultaneously
determined that the expansion of our Universe is accelerating, a surprising result
since confirmed by several independent methods. The conclusion is that approximately
70% of the mass/energy of our Universe is due to a previously unknown 'force' now
called 'Dark Energy'. The $500,000 prize money will be shared amongst the co-authors
of the original papers, with the award ceremony being held on 7 September 2007 at
Trinity College in Cambridge. Past winners of the Gruber Cosmology Prize are John
Mather and the COBE team, Martin Rees, Vera Rubin, and Allan Sandage. The Gruber Award
is described in more detail here. - - posted August 7, 2007

The objective of QSP is to develop pratical sensors operating outside of a controlled
laboratory environment that exploit non-classical photon states to surpass classical
sensor resolution. The Phase I grant has a duration of 18 months, and could lead to
additional phase grants. Co-investigators include scientists from the NASA Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Raytheon Corporation, and MathSense Analytics, all well as collaborators
from the University of Calgary and the University of Toronto.

Former LSU Physics undergraduate, Barrett Deris, has received an NSF Graduate Fellowship. Deris is currently a graduate student at
Univ. of California-San Diego.

LSU Physics & Astronomy graduate student, Enrique Pazos, won the prize for the best graduate student presentation at the 3rd Gulf Coast Gravity
Conference held at the University of Alabama-Huntsville.

The SPIRES bibliographical service at Stanford University has compiled a list of the most cited articles of all time
to appear in the GR-QC preprint repository. This repository contains almost all papers
in gravitation starting in 1992. Jorge Pullin's paper with Dr. Rodolfo Gambini, "Nonstandard Optics in Quantum Space-time", cited 240 times, is the 21st most cited
paper ever in the repository.

LSU Professor Named LIGO Head - Joseph A. Giaime, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at LSU, was recently named head of the
Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, or LIGO, based in Livingston,
LA.

The American Institute of Physics (AIP) and the IEEE-Computer Society have appointed Professor Joel Tohline as an editor of the Visualizations department for their technical magazine Computing
in Science and Engineering. The constituent readerships that CiSE serves include scientists
and engineers from many disciplines as well as applied mathematicians and computer
professionals, whose collaboration drives the cutting edge of computational science
and education.

Professor Philip Adams has been selected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS). His citation reads, "For his major contributions to the understanding of high
field superconductivity and two dimensional electron localization." Election to Fellowship
in the American Physical Society (APS) is limited to no more than one half of one
percent of the membership.

The paper "Multi-block simulations in general relativity: high-order discretizations, numerical
stability and applications" by Luis Lehner, Manuel Tiglio, and Oscar Reula was highlighted by the editorial board of the journal "Classical and Quantum Gravity".

Jorge Pullin has been appointed to the Basilis Xanthopoulos Prize selection committee. This prestigious
international prize is awarded every three years to a physicist under the age of 40
for contributions in gravitational physics. It consists of $10,000 and the opportunity
to give a plenary lecture at the International meeting on General Relativity and Gravitation.
The prize is funded by the Greek Foundation for Science and Technology (FORTH).

Luis Lehner guest edited a special issue of the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity (Institut of Physics, UK), collecting
the papers of the program on numerical relativity at the Banff International Research
Station.

Luis Lehner has been appointed to the NSF cyberinfrastructure User Advisory Committee. Taken from
his invitation to join this new committee, "Your nationally renowned research expertise
and experience with cyberinfrastructure make you an ideal choice as one of the initial
members of this new advisory committee. You will be among one of the initial twelve
members asked to serve on this CUAC.

Article published in Physical Review Focus by Philip Adams, et al. - out of hundreds of papers published every week in the Physical Review series,
one is chosen for a Focus coverage.

Gabriela Gonzalez is quoted in "Black Holes Collide, and Gravity Quivers", The New York Times, May 2, 2006 article.

News Release - Local Astronomy and Educational Groups to Celebrate Sun-Earth Day with a Special
Event.

"Boundary Conditions for Einstein's Field Equations: Mathematical and Numerical Analysis",
by Olivier Sarbach and Manuel Tiglio, published in The Journal of Hyperbolic Differential Equations 2,839-883 (2005),
has been chosen as featured article of the Journal.

Bradley Schaefer made announcement through a Press Release on Wednesday, January 11 at the 207th meeting
of the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, D.C., described his GRB
results and its implications for the not-so-constant cosmological constant. See and
hear "All Things Considered" on NPR and read more in the New York Times.

Dmitry Uskov and Ravi Rau have developed a very compact solution of time dependent operator equations in quantum
physics. A general problem for N quantum states has been formulated as analogous to
one with two states. The N dimensions are viewed as split into (N-1) and one dimensions,
and effective Hamiltonians derived for each of those two sets. Thereby, a stepwise
solution is provided for any N. A specific focus is on phases of the evolution operator
and their decomposition into dynamical and geometrical contributions, these considerations
of interest today in the fields of quantum computation and quantum information. Among
recent papers submitted for publication is one which draws parallels between effective
Hamiltonians for time-dependent and time-independent problems in quantum physics.

Jorge Pullin has been appointed Managing Editor of the International Journal of Modern Physics
D. This is a peer reviewed journal published by World Scientific in Singapore and
is the leading journal in gravitation and cosmology published in Asia.

2005 News

Assistant Professor, Hwang Lee , has been awarded as Principal Investigator of a $400K one year grant from the prestigious
National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Directors Innovation Initiative (DII) program
for a seed research project entitled "Photonic-Crystal Satellite Reflectors and Radiators:
A New Approach to Satellite Thermal Control."

Visiting Professor, Rodolfo Gambini, has been elected to the Academy of Sciences of the Third World (Trieste).

Jonathan Dowling was elected a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) by the OSA Board of
Directors at the October 18th meeting. He is being recognized for "fundamental contributions
to optics in the areas of photonic crystals, quantum imaging, quantum metrology, and
quantum information processing, and for service to OSA." Dowling will receive the award at the Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference in
May, 2006.

Book Authored by LSU Researcher Published - Carlos Palenzuela, Postdoctoral Researcher at LSU in Physics and Astronomy and the Center for Computation & Technology, celebrated the publication of his first book, "Elements of Numerical Relativity:
From Einstein's Equations to Black Hole Simulations."

Jorge Pullin has been elected as a corresponding member of the Latin American Academy of Sciences. The Academy has 205 members from Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Costa Rica, Chile,
Ecuador, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay, USA
and Venezuela.

Jonathan Dowling has been awarded a NASA Tech Brief Award for NTR no 40552: "High Power Fiber Laser
Technology Using Linear and Nonlinear Photonic Bandgap Materials" by the NASA Inventions
and Contributions Board.